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Puncture   Listen
noun
Puncture  n.  
1.
The act of puncturing; perforating with something pointed.
2.
A small hole made by a point; a slight wound, bite, or sting; as, the puncture of a nail, needle, or pin. "A lion may perish by the puncture of an asp."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Puncture" Quotes from Famous Books



... who was still present watched him closely, and noticed that the cuff on his left hand was somewhat crumpled, as if it had been recently pushed back. Without a word he seized Mr. Jocelyn's arm and pulled back his coat and shirt sleeve, revealing a bright red puncture just made, and many others ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... a forlorn hope at best, and he knew it. Moreover, an accident was as apt to happen to him as to De Morbihan: given an unsound tire or a puncture, or let him be delayed two seconds by some traffic hindrance, and nothing short of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... ear, and esophagus; and he recognizes foreign growths such as polypi in the air-passages, and gives the method of their removal. Such operations as tracheotomy, tonsillotomy, bronchotomy, staphylotomy, etc., were performed by him, and he even advocated and described puncture of the abdominal cavity, giving careful directions as to the location in which such punctures should be made. He advocated amputation of the breast for the cure of cancer, and described extirpation of the uterus. Just how successful this last ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... his father had much to occupy him. But the little man—who, to do him justice, cared no more (in his own phrase) for imminent danger or death, than he did for the puncture of a flea's proboscis—did not so easily renounce the secret object of his ambition, which was to acquire the notice of the large and lofty Sir Geoffrey Peveril, who, being at least three inches taller than his son, was in so far possessed of that superior excellence, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... away. Keep him securely bound," said Hamilton. "Confine him. We'll see how long it will take to refresh his mind. We'll puncture the ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... the South American Indians used it on their arrow points in the chase, animals killed by it being quite wholesome. I also told her that curari may, except in very large doses, be swallowed with impunity, but if introduced into a puncture of the skin, so as to mix with the blood, the effect is instantly fatal, and leaves no trace of poison behind it. She asked me how to obtain a solution of the drug, and I explained in detail; then, seeing she was ready ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... reasons for this. One was that it would not be liable to puncture, particularly in the proposed underground trip, and the other was that it did not have to be so large as a cloth bag would have had to be. It was also a permanent part of the ship, and on a voyage where part of the time the travelers would be in the air and part ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... says to me he will fix up the spelling wherever needed and attend to the punctuating; but all the rest of it will be my own just like I puts it down. I reads and writes very well but someway I never learned to puncture. So the places where it is necessary to be punctual in order to make good sense and keep everything regulation and make the talk sound natural is his doings and also some of the spelling. But everything else is ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... nuisance," he said, and jabbed at his scalp with his pencil as though he meant to puncture his skull. "Wait until you've been here a few weeks and you'll have another ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... 'It's a puncture,' said Anthea, stooping down, and standing up again with a thorn which she had got ready for the purpose. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... when the day at its start Provokes a malevolent feeling; Her answer may puncture a hole in my heart, But Time is an expert at healing; And that will be better than learning too late, At the end of the honeymoon season, That the lady had only consented to mate In an hour that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various

... the day, so long as they protected their heads and necks, but on the approach of evening they had to get into warm and dry under-garments; they had to keep a sharp watch for the striped "anophele" mosquito, were taught to spray the puncture, if they were tapped by the mosquito lancet, with chloride of ethyl, and had to submit occasionally to a hypodermic injection of quinine. The nitrogen they got ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... instituted some curious experiments on the sense of smelling, and he was led to believe that it depended more on the fifth pair of nerves than on the olfactory nerve. He divided the fifth pair, and from that moment no odour, no puncture, produced the slightest apparent impression on the membrane of the nose. In another dog he destroyed the two olfactory nerves, and placed some strong odours beneath the nostrils of the animal. The dog conducted himself as he would have done in his ordinary ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... said, "this small instrument is sufficient to save me! Should the worst ensue, I know where to find the carotid artery, and even such a slight puncture as my timorous hand could make would set my spirit free! Oh, my father! oh, my father! you little thought when you taught your Clara the mysteries of anatomy to what a fearful use she would put your lessons! ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... the third and subsequent years a full crop. The important thing is to keep the dead canes well pruned out, as the cane borer is one of the worst insect pests. When they appear they can be stopped by cutting off the shoot several inches below the puncture as soon as it begins to droop, and burning the part cut off. Again, Mr. Powell says, "Currants require rich soil. A clay or heavy loam is better than a heavy dry soil. They should be planted in the fall. The average from ten thousand bushes should be about four ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... nursery maid petting me, and all three examining my chest, where I told them I felt the puncture, and pronouncing that there was no sign visible that any such thing had ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... it isn't a blow-out!" Uncle Toby exclaimed. Had there been a blow-out the noise would have been much louder, like the bang of a gun. "As long as it's only a puncture we can easily mend it, and I'll do that while the rest of ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis

... pumiko. Pumpkin kukurbo. Punch (drink) puncxo. Punch and Judy pulcxinelo. Punctilious precizema. Punctual gxustatempa, akurata. Punctuality akurateco. Punctuate interpunkcii. Punctuation interpunkcio. Puncture trapiki. Pungent pika, morda. Punish puni. Punishment puno—ado. Puny malgranda, malfortika. Pupil (scholar) lernanto. Pupil (of eye) pupilo. Puppet pupo, marioneto. Puppy hundido. Purchase ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... time the puncture was repaired and they were again on their way, it was half-past seven and all hope of a timely arrival was abandoned. As they slowed up at the Bartlett house, their uneasiness was increased by the fact that ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... the matter with my foot? There is blood flowing from it!" We found that one of the creatures had been sucking his too. John bound it up, and in a short time tranquillity was restored, and we were all soon in our hammocks. Hideous as these creatures appear, they are harmless, as the puncture they make is but slight, and the wound quickly heals. They showed their sense by selecting our hut for their night quarters, as they there found themselves more secure from the beasts which prey on them than in their ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... bone, and little round pieces of wood. Some women possess glass beads secured in trade from the Christianized natives. Often two or three white or black beads are used for ear ornaments, though it is not a very common practice to puncture the ears for this purpose as in Bataan, where leaves and flowers are often worn stuck in a hole through the lobe of the ear. What appears to be a necklace and really answers the purpose of such is ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... hunch. A silent, giant-gray thing in the black silence of the corridor, grim, intent and seeming irresistible, he swept along it; and every second he knew that a raygun might spit from where it had been waiting in ambush to puncture his suit and kill him. For whether or not Ku Sui was aware that he was being tracked by his old, bitter foe, ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... make the best of the place I'm in, but for a man of puncture, as the feller said, like I used to think I was, I sure did miscombobble it when I married that educated squaw. No woman I ever was married to in my life ever had sense enough to track a man like that woman's follered me. She sure is a ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... puncture the gas bag," murmured Tom. as he began taking the generating machine apart so as to get ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton

... damage likely to be done to his friend by this flattering incident, sought to puncture Honnell's unhealthy pride by saying, "Plaho?" (or "bad") as a suggestion to the critics; but this only caused them to say repeatedly and with emphasis, "Dobra!"—which was one of Honnell's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various

... the floor. But she knelt down and set them cross-wise, and then straightened herself and crooked her arms above her head, and began to dance a sword-dance. Even her filial relations to him hardly justified such a puncture of office discipline, and he sat blowing at it until he saw that this was a new phase of her so entertaining misery. It is always absurd when that pert and ferocious dance, invented by an unsensuous race inordinately and mistakenly vain of its knees, is performed by a graceful ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... up—his hand clutched his side—there came across his disfigured features a queer twisted smile—he sighed softly and slowly sank in a crumpled heap. A clean little puncture in the breast of his coat told the whole story. Patsy felt herself slipping.... ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... act, and with a sudden clutch I pulled the guardsman away, whirled him around, and stood in his place. As I was stooping over the Turk he raised himself slowly, doubtless aroused by the pain of the puncture, and turned on me a most beseeching look, which changed at once into something like joy and surprise. Immediately a deathlike pallor spread over his face, and he sank ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... that all engineers, past, present, and future, are baffled, defeated and outdone! Choose any place you please upon your body, and run the finest needle you can find into it what will issue from the puncture? ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... Bates tells me that the flowers are in the most marked manner neglected by bees and lepidoptera in Amazonia. Now the curious projections or horns to the stamens of Monochaetum are full of fluid, and the suspicion occurs to me that diptera or small hymenoptera may puncture these horns like they puncture (proved since my orchid book was published) the dry nectaries of true Orchis. I forget whether Rhexia is common; but I very much wish you would next summer watch on a warm day a group of flowers, and see whether they are visited by small insects, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... properly, and in trying to clear her first fence she staggered like a soddened drunkard and fell. The rascals had not become artistic poisoners at that date, and it was found that the poor mare had received the drug through a rather large puncture in ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... than twenty or thirty feet. The street in a few moments was clear of pedestrians; remained littered with glass from the broken bottles. A taxi came suddenly around the corner, and the driver, with an almost immediate tire puncture, saw the monster. He hauled up to the curb, left his ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... N. hole, foramen; puncture, perforation; fontanel^; transforation^; pinhole, keyhole, loophole, porthole, peephole, mousehole, pigeonhole; eye of a needle; eyelet; slot. opening; aperture, apertness^; hiation^, yawning, oscitancy^, dehiscence, patefaction^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined arm-chair with a long ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... she looked out of the window, she gave a faint scream. Her husband was returning. He had a puncture. She retained her presence of mind, however, long enough to step to the telephone. Just as she had finished delivering ...
— Best Short Stories • Various

... left handed, and had also a peculiar jerk in his manner of laying on the cat-o'-nine-tails, and that always brought away with it little knobs of flesh wherever the knots fell, and so neatly, that blood would, at every blow, spout from the wounds, as from the puncture of a lancet. Besides, the torture was also doubled by first scoring over the back in one direction, and the right-handed floggers coming after in another. They cut out ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... he, indeed, but because of the present danger she says to herself that she would not have him there. Thus, doubly she shows the devotion of a sweetheart, fearing at once his death, and desiring that honour may be his. And Cliges sword in hand attacks the other three, who face him bravely and puncture and split his shield. But they are unable to lay hands upon him, or to pierce the meshes of his hauberk. And whatever Cliges reaches cannot stand against his blow, but must needs be split and torn apart; for he turns faster than a top driven and lashed by ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... hundred kilometres straight across France, from the Manche to the Mediterranean, and not so much as a puncture occurred. On another occasion a little journey of half the length resulted in the general smashing up, four times in succession, of a little bolt (no great disaster in itself), within the interior arrangements of the motor, which necessitated a half a day's work on each occasion ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... Above this is a flour-like gray layer varying in thickness from an inch to ten inches, but below the tight clay the subsoil seems to be more porous, and I am hoping that we may lay tile just below the tight clay and then puncture that clay stratum with red clover roots and thus improve the physical condition of the soil. I asked Mr. Secor, a friend who operates a coal mine,—and farms for recreation,—if he thought alfalfa could be raised on this type ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... none of the excitement bred of actual fighting to sustain him, it requires a high decree of courage to kneel or stoop when every one else is lying down, and in this exposed position first to find the tiny bullet puncture, and then bandage the wound satisfactorily. Many and many a life has been saved by this conduct on the part of our medical staff, for if an important artery is severed by a bullet or shell-splinter a man may easily bleed to death in ten minutes. I have myself on one ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... friend I ask you don't do a ballet on them crackers. Run over the mutt. What care we for life. Gee, the canine is right there as the artful dodger. Ah! what? Bing! What was that? A puncture! My! For goodness sake, how long will we be bogged down. Oh, we can wait that long, can't we, dears? Pipe the yokel. Shall I hand him a game of chatter? No? ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey

... conveyance from her country seat to her town house, and also a very practical way of getting to see her friends at week-ends. She has been heard to complain, however, that a substitute for the pneumatic tyre less liable to puncture than it is would be a ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... others, many others, appeared to dispute the scene with us, to break the magic of the moonlight, and to puncture the vast silence of the desert with their cooings and gurglings and chatterings in German, English, Arabic, and every other language known since the Tower of Babel. Arab guides lit up the Sphinx with flaring magnesium, an impertinence that should have made hideous with hate ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... have had a puncture when the machine fell down," he said as they jumped off. "It bumped up against the tree, and some projection jammed into the tire. Here it is now," as he disclosed a ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... over a man who hasn't had time to take his spurs off yet, why you stood all kinds of chances getting a puncture! You don't want ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... to a male child that was idiotic. Beatty relates a curious accident to a fetus in utero. The woman was in her first confinement and was delivered of a small but healthy and strong boy. There was a small puncture in the abdominal parietes, through which the whole of the intestines protruded and were constricted. The opening was so small that he had to enlarge it with a bistoury to replace the bowel, which was dark and congested; he sutured ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... me, madame? The accidents of life—of mine especially—often drive one to acts of cruelty for which I am the first to blush. But have no fear for your son: it's a mere prick, a little puncture in the arm which I gave him while we were questioning him. In an hour, at the most, you won't know that it happened. Once more, all my apologies. But I had to make sure of your silence." He bowed again, thanked M. de Velines ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... "I thank her. She has made me feel that nine parts in ten of my heart have always been sound as a bell, and the tenth bled from a mere puncture: a lancet-prick that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... to puncture an otter's hide, any beast might be pardoned for losing its grip; but he did not. Between the tame hounds' fangs and his smaller wild ones was some difference—about the difference between our teeth and a savage's, multiplied once ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... beetles, yellow, brown or gray in color, and all have enormously long snouts. The mouth is located at the point of the snout and the beetles use these snouts to bore through the covering of the nuts after the kernel is partially or fully formed. When the puncture into the nut is completed one or more eggs are inserted by means of an extensile, thread-like tube, or ovipositor, of the same length as the snout. The eggs hatch into the familiar worms found in ripe chestnuts, hickory-nuts and hazel nuts. The large hole in the shell ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various

... and unsightly—through which the smoke comes in huge clouds to your mouth, instead of slender streams on the palate. 'How, then,' say you; 'prick it, or cut it, or what? Tear it not, cut it not; nor yet puncture it. Don't be frightened of the cigar—thrusting a half-inch alone into the mouth; but, when you begin, take a good half of it in the mouth; pull at it lustily for a few seconds, to open its pores; then draw it out, allowing but an inch ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... a few miles of Pineford, Tom took a road that branched off and went around it. Stopping at night in a lonely farmhouse, he pushed on the next morning, hoping to get to the woods that night. But a puncture to one of the tires delayed him, and after that was repaired he discovered something wrong with his batteries. He had to go five miles out of his way to get new cells, and it was dusk when he came to the stretch of woods ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton

... drew it together so that nothing could be seen of the work inside. They began spinning some on the forty-second, some on the forty-third day, when about three inches in length and plump to bursting. I think at a puncture in the skin they would have spurted like a fountain. They began spinning at night and were from sight before I went to them the following morning. So I hunted a box and packed them ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... that promises an adventure, Hugh," came the prompt reply. "There is plenty of gas in the tank, and if we do get a puncture on the sharp stones we've got an extra tube along, with lots and lots of muscle lying around loose for changing the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson

... his hand to the place he perhaps crushes, perhaps merely brushes away, a fly which has bitten him so as to draw blood. The man thinks little of so trifling a hurt, but the next morning he finds the puncture exceedingly painful. An inflamed pimple forms, which quickly gets worse, while constitutional symptoms of a feverish kind come on. In alarm he seeks medical advice. The doctor tells him that it is a malignant pustule, and takes at once the most ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... attacking the matter in a business-like fashion, and leaning down from his slightly elevated position upon the platform, pointed a finger at the singed and blackened puncture upon the temple of the thing that was once Dacre Wynne. He pointed also to the wound ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... of the microscopic mandibles. Those two delicate spikes are incapable of chewing anything, but they may very well serve to pierce the epidermis with an aperture smaller than that made by the finest needle; and it is through this puncture that the Leucopsis sucks the juices of his prey. They are instruments made to perforate the bag of fat which slowly, without suffering any internal injury, is emptied through an opening repeated here and there. The Anthrax' ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... courses on, just beneath the surface, without penetrating further. Nor was there any mark on the opposite part of the thigh to denote its place, as when a ball forces itself straight through a limb, and lodges, perhaps, close to the skin on the other side. Nothing was visible but a small, ragged puncture, bluish about the edges, as if the rough point of a tenpenny nail had been forced into the flesh, and withdrawn. It seemed almost impossible, that through so small an aperture, a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... hide behind my temporary rank," I answered hotly. "I waive it, gladly. Anything, for a chance to puncture that rotten carcass of yours or to get a good fair ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott

... career. He went to the capital of Colorado the most indefatigable merry-maker that ever turned night into day, a past-master in the art of mimicry, the most inveterate practical joker that ever violated the proprieties of friendship, time, and occasion to raise a laugh or puncture a fraud. As his friend of those days, E.D. Cowen, has written, "as a farceur and entertainer no ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... Lake. This is obtained from the lac or lacca of India, a resinous secretion which seems to depend upon the puncture of a small insect—coccus ficus—made for the sake of depositing its ova on the branches of several plants, found in Siam, Assam, and Bengal. The twigs soon become encrusted with a mammelated substance of a red colour more or less deep, nearly transparent, ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... them. In a pure or nearly isolated state, it exists chiefly in the inner bark of vascular and especially exogenous trees, and is preserved in the interior with the greatest care: its escape externally results either from disease, as in the case of plum and cherry-trees, from the puncture of insects, cracks in the bark, or by artificial incisions. The death of the tree soon follows the loss of this important juice, and thousands of trees of the genus acacia are annually sacrificed in different parts of Africa ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various

... regarded as a step necessarily fatal." And in order to save Mr. Hawthorne, and stem the tide of corruption, he is willing to point out his error. Nevertheless, he is somewhat at a loss to know where to puncture the heart of the offence, for "there is a provoking concealment of the author's motive," he confesses, "from the beginning to the end of the story. We wonder what he would be at: whether he is making fun of all religion, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... 10,000 horse-power engine. A thin layer of dirt beneath the wheels of an electric car can prevent the current which propels the car from passing to the rail, and then back to the power-house." There would, indeed, be a puncture of the paper if the current had a sufficient voltage, or pressure; yet the fact remains that current electricity can be very easily confined to its conductor by means of ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... is the ear lasserated or disvigored for this purpose as among many nations. the men never mark their skins by birning, cuting, nor puncturing and introducing a colouring matter as many nations do. there women sometimes puncture a small circle on their forehead nose or cheeks and thus introduce a black matter usually soot and grease which leaves an indelible stane. tho this even is by no means common. their arms offensive and defensive consist in the bow and arrows sheild, some lances, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... scratch on my left side and he suffered an equally glorious little puncture in his right arm. The seconds declared enough. Then we fell into the arms of each other and became friends for life. A year later I went back to New Orleans, and I was the best man at the wedding of Gerard ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... said to defamation, Who will hear thee? and to artifice, What canst thou perform? But, my son, despise not thou the malice of the weakest, remember that venom supplies the want of strength, and that the lion may perish by the puncture of an asp." ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... came pretty near finishing you off. You have had a heavy dose. I want to know who did it." I caught up his arm, and thrust the puncture under his ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... off on his bicycle once more, making an incongruous figure in his dress-suit, but pedalling sedately to keep cool. Fortune, however, was against him, for they had begun clipping those northern hedgerows, and an ominous bumping upon a perfectly flat road led to the discovery of a puncture a long mile from Normanthorpe. Thence onward the unhappy cyclist had to choose between running beside his machine and riding on the rims, and between the two expedients arrived at last both very hot and rather late. But he thought ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... an impassable dam at the root of the organ. That this is the true condition has been more than once verified from the instant relief given to the whole condition by the prompt employment of the supra-pubic puncture or aspiration, as catheterization in such cases is altogether out of the question, and should never be attempted or employed unless a soft catheter ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... of the poisoning Pope Alexander VI. (Borgia), that he caused a somewhat similar key to be used in opening a cabinet; but the Pope's key was poisoned in the handle, and provided with a small sharp pin, which gave a slight puncture sufficient to allow the poison to pass below the skin. When the Holy Father wished to rid himself of an objectionable friend, he would request him to unlock his cabinet; as the lock turned rather stiffly, a little pressure was necessary ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt

... old-fashioned satire has disappeared because the game is no longer considered worth the candle. To puncture the tire of pretence is amusing enough; but it is useless to stick tacks under the steam road-roller: the road-roller advances remorselessly and smooths down your mischievous little tacks and you too, indifferently. The huge interests of politics, trade, progress, override your passionate protest. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... of your shotgun shells and take out the shot." While he had been speaking the lad had slipped one leg out of his pants and exposed the wound to view. It was only a tiny red puncture of the skin midway between knee and hip, but the bitten one knew that tiny place was more dangerous than a rifle ball. Like a flash, he drew his hunting-knife and cut out a chunk of flesh as big as a hen egg where the wound had been. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... slip. That would let out the blood and cause death. I am uncertain whether the hold is now maintained by the pressure of the tissues or the adhesive quality of the serum which was set free by the puncture. I am convinced, though, that in either event the hold is easily broken and that it may give way at any moment, for it is under several kinds of strains. Every time the heart contracts and crowds ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... Frenchman] With me, Duval. If the nails fail, puncture their tires with a bullet. [He gives the rifle to Duval, who follows him up the hill. Mendoza produces an opera glass. The others hurry across to the road ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... then took a bottle of beef extract, which in Russia is popular with all classes in preparing their cabbage soup, and refilling the syringe, plunged the needle through the cork, afterwards placing a spot of melted resin upon the puncture. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... possible. However, there was no misunderstanding their brusque motions ordering us away from the plane or the threatening noises which reinforced the command. No sooner had we reluctantly complied than they proceeded methodically to puncture the tires ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... bent on progression, Has taken the model in hand, And brought in the line of succession A figure more pleasingly planned; Her eyes with the gladdest of glances, Her lips and her hair and her cheek Can puncture like so many lances A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various

... the scowl upon the countenance of the commander. He swayed, a hand faltering to his forehead, where dark blood was beginning to well from a cleanly drilled puncture. Then he collapsed completely, falling prone across the raised sill of the bulkhead opening. A convulsive tremor ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... disease germs into the system, usually by puncture of the skin or hypodermic injection; many diseases so introduced assume a mild form, and render the subject not liable to the severe form. Inoculation for smallpox, the virus being taken from actual smallpox pustules, was practised by the ancient Brahmans and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... kinds of Echinus, are also plentiful under blocks of coral (Astraea and Maeandrina) in the pools; one of the last, remarkable for its very long, slender, black spines, has the power of giving an exceedingly painful puncture, if carelessly handled—for a few minutes the sensation is similar to that caused by the sting of a wasp; of the others, a fine Ophiura is remarkable for its great size and grass-green colour, and an Ophiocoma for the prodigious ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... bodkin Harrison Gray Otis thought to puncture the Southern panic. But the slaveholders had correcter notions of the nature and tendency of the Abolition enterprise than had the Boston mayor. They had a strange, an obstinate presentiment of disaster from the first instant that the Liberator loomed upon their ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... Ishtuvigu, or, as the Greeks called him, Astyages, the son of Cyaxares.** According to the custom of the times, the two contracting parties, after taking the vow of fidelity, sealed the compact by pricking each other's arms and sucking the few drops of blood which oozed from the puncture.*** ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... obtained from the resinous incrustation produced on the bark of the twigs and branches of various tropical trees by the puncture of the female "lac insect" (Taccardia lacca). The lac is removed from the twigs by "beating" in water; the woody matter floats to the surface, and the resin sinks to the bottom, and when removed forms what is known as "seed-lac." Formerly, the solution, which ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... stained in the face with curious spiral and other figures, of a black or deep blue colour; but it is doubtful whether this be ornamental, or intended as a mark of particular distinction; and the women, who are marked so, have the puncture only on their lips, or a small spot on their chins. Both sexes often besmear their faces and heads with a red paint, which seems to be a martial ochre mixed with grease; and the women sometimes wear necklaces ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... that she could lie down and roll, if she felt that way disposed. I took the coat I had used for a pad, and carried it a short distance into the swamp and threw it into a puddle of water. I deliberated whether I should puncture the end of my finger with my jack-knife and stain my coat with the blood, but concluded that such a proceeding was unnecessary. I knew that you would be mystified by the coat as you knew quite well that I had not worn it when I left home in the morning. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... he made close examination. At the base of Mr. Kenny's neck, well above the shoulder-blade, dark blood was welling slowly from an ugly puncture. And in front there was a corresponding puncture, but smaller. And presently his deft and gentle fingers, exploring the folds of the boy's undershirt, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... a hero, and he feels the puncture of a pin; throw him into battle, and he is almost insensible to vital gashes. So in war. Impelled alternately by hope and fear, stimulated by revenge, depressed by shame, or elevated by victory, the people become invincible. No privation ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... room. If removal of the tops of the tins does not expose enough gasoline to the air to ensure copious evaporation, you can open lightly constructed tins further with a knife, ice pick or sharpened nail file. Or puncture a tiny hole in the tank which will permit gasoline to leak out on the floor. This will greatly increase the rate of evaporation. Before you light your candle, be sure that windows are closed and the room is ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services

... black snake, which had from the first kept its sharp eyes intently fixed on those of the rattle-snake, did not appear satisfied that life was extinct, but held it in a fast embrace, carefully avoiding the risk of a puncture from its fangs. ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... of glass wool for heat insulation. Inside the glass wool was a layer of material serving exactly the function of the coating of a bulletproof gasoline tank. No meteor under a quarter-inch size could hope to make a puncture, even at the forty-five-mile-per-second speed that is the theoretical maximum for meteors. And if one did, the selfsealing stuff would stop the leak immediately. Joe could explain the protection of ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... the foot—it was quite cold—while the orderly removed a bandage from the thigh. The bone had been shattered. A bullet had also entered the man's chest, making a small round puncture. A shell fragment had struck his upper lip, leaving a jagged triangular hole below the nose. Several teeth had been knocked out. The upper palate had been gashed and partly separated from the bone. It hung inside the half-open mouth ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... patterns, is at their service! How kind the "Critical Notices"—where small authorship comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy—always are to them! Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and other fictions; so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips; don't puncture their swimming-bladders; don't come down on their pasteboard boxes; don't break the ends of their brittle and unstable reputations, you fellows who all feel sure that your names will be household words a thousand ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... poison from getting into the system by a tight bandage on the arm or leg (it is sure to be one or the other) just above the wound. Next, get it out of the wound by slashing the wound two or more ways with a sharp knife or razor at least as deep as the puncture. Squeeze it—wash it out with permanganate of potash dissolved in water to the color of wine. Suck it out with the lips (if you have no wounds in the mouth it will do you no harm there). Work, massage, suck, and wash to get all the poison out. After thorough treatment to remove ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... proposed, rarely practised, Leslie did. She changed her ways: with what travail of spirit, what heart-sickness she alone could tell. It is no common slight or safe influence that causes a revulsion in the whole bodily system; it is no skin-deep puncture that bleeds inwardly; it is no easy lesson that the disciple lays to heart; but Leslie surmounted and survived it. She had escaped her responsibilities, and slumbered at her post. She would do so no longer. She belonged now, after little Leslie, to her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... reassuringly up at her flushed face. "Rely on me to puncture your balloon if it's needed, Miss Pat," he said in a tone that was very comforting, and, as she dropped a light kiss on his dark, waving hair, he added more soberly, "It's a mighty hard thing for a singer to be unselfish and generous, I warn you, my dear. It's going to be a struggle sometimes, ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... question the words of this distinguished and excellent gentleman. Indeed, it was particularly surprising, because (if I knew myself) I precisely agreed with him. But there is a certain waywardness in my composition, which loves to puncture an inflated conventionality, even when I myself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... white-capped nurses strode up to the side of my bed and without the slightest warning roughly pushed a little glass tube in my mouth. Not knowing whether she wanted me to swallow it or was merely trying to puncture a hole in my tongue, I put it out again and ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... at a crawl, slid and skipped and jumped down slopes, negotiated curves on two wheels and brought them triumphantly through White Cliff Canyon, over the malpais belt, up and across a mesa and so to the far brink of it an hour before dawn without puncture, without a broken leaf in the springs, with shock absorbers still on duty and ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... appear to be much damage done back here," observed Tom. "No leaks. Guess they didn't puncture us." ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... catch up with the truck. At the end of the first half mile, the horrible roadbed began to take toll of the elderly tires. There were two punctures, in rapid succession. Then came a blowout. And, at the bottom of the mountain a third puncture varied the monotony of the ride. Thus, the truck reached the Place well ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... slight puncture in her heart, involuntarily carried her hand to her bosom. It was a strange, a wonderful feeling, which stirred within her, partly partaking of joy at seeing and hearing her friend Carlo, as people were murmuring praises of his beauty, and of his great skill upon the harp, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted, was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence, slightly below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine, of a minute puncture—undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe. Then, unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain; for undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed to efface from Eltham's mind his plans of ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... fast gaining knowledge; every evening I read surgical and medical books, put into my hands by Mr Cophagus, who explained whenever I applied to him, and I soon obtained a very fair smattering of my profession. He also taught me how to bleed, by making me, in the first instance, puncture very scientifically, all the larger veins of a cabbage-leaf, until well satisfied with the delicacy of my hand, and the precision of my eye, he wound up his instructions by permitting me to breathe a vein in ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... the Borgia's favorite medium.) It was painted with hlangkuna and replaced. When worn, an intense irritation was produced and a cutaneous eruption which, if scratched even very lightly, resulted in a puncture of the skin sufficient to allow the inimical elements of the poison to obtain access to the system of ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... if it did not hurt Emilia. But it now seemed as if the slumbering girl enjoyed the caressing contact of the smooth fingers, and turned her head, almost imperceptibly, to meet them. This was more than Hope could bear. It was as if that slight motion were a puncture to relieve her overburdened heart; a thousand thoughts swept over her,—of their father, of her sister's childhood, of her years of absent expectation; she thought how young the girl was, how fascinating, how passionate, how tempted; ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... hauled 'em aboard the Saucy Sally. What did I do with 'em? Well, I sold 'em to a feller in Rio Janeiro. And what do you suppose he done with 'em? He used 'em to make tyres for his motor-car—takes a lot to puncture a sea-sarpint's skin." ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... that he should not hear a Discourse from him: But you may, answered Possidonius; and immediately entered into the Point of Stoical Philosophy, which says Pain is not an Evil. During the Discourse, upon every Puncture he felt from his Distemper, he smiled and cried out, Pain, Pain, be as impertinent and troublesome as you please, I shall never own that thou art ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Keith wondered, had that ship preceded her? How was he to know that it had gone straight through? There might be a dozen different turnings in this tunnel: the submarine could easily tilt head-on against a jagged rock and puncture her hull. There might be mines planted directly in their course; he might be swimming straight into some ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... truths."[176] Which decision, it seems to me, is as if some modest and rational gnat, who had submitted to the humiliating conviction that it could know no more of the world than might be traversed by flight, or tasted by puncture, yet, in the course of an experiment on a philosopher with its proboscis, hearing him speak of the Institutes of Justinian, should observe, on its return to the society of gnats, that the Institutes of Justinian were not objective realities, any more than they were absolute truths. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... surged against it. I caught a dizzying glimpse of the abyss. Then it receded as we bounced the other way. And then we fell to the grid. His helmet bashed against mine, striking as though butting with the side of his head to puncture my visor panel. His gloved fingers were clutching at ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... circumstances, he will very probably have forgotten. It is unsafe to rely upon the most religious or sacramental obligation to secrecy, unless, together with the secret, you could transfer also a magic ring that should, by a growing pressure or puncture, sting a man into timely ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... cavity, excavation, pit, perforation, rent, fissure, opening, aperture, delve, cache, concavity, mortise, puncture, orifice, eyelet, crevice, loophole, interstice, gap, spiracle, vent, bung, pothole, manhole, scuttle, scupper, muset, muse; cave, holt, den, lair, retreat, cover, hovel, burrow. Antonyms: imperforation, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... tube. As it heats, the air within the tube expands and becomes compressed, and as soon as the hot spot on the side of the tube is soft enough, the confined air blows out, pushing the hot glass aside as it does so, leaving a small puncture. This is to be enlarged with pointed charcoal until it also flares as shown at B. This flare is then connected to the flared end of a straight tube, C, and the T-joint, D, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... which man's desire Had forged and welded, burned white and cold. Every blade which man could mould, Which could cut, or slash, or cleave, or rip, Or pierce, or thrust, or carve, or strip, Or gash, or chop, or puncture, or tear, Or slice, or hack, they all were there. Nerveless and shaking, round and round, I stared at the walls and at the ground, Till the room spun like a whipping top, And a stern voice in my ear said, "Stop! I sell no tools for murderers here. Of what are you thinking! Please clear ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... likely that anything is going to knock my head off or puncture vital sections of me. But in case the ludicrous should happen, I want you to know that a cleaner man goes before the last Court Marshal than would have stood trial there ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... stumpiness, the nails trained to long points to hide the deficiency. The thumbs, in particular—how squat, how stunted! They appeared to have only two joints instead of three. Somehow they gave her a feeling akin to nausea.... She sponged the puncture with iodine, smoothed down the skirt, cleaned and replaced the needle in its case, and all the time she was thinking of those oddly repulsive hands. Repulsive to her, that is. She knew that not many people would have ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... order now for them earrings we were mentionin', Mr. Deadeasy. You see, I had to puncture this one so folks ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... in abstraction the Senior Surgeon stared unheeding into the whizzing black road. Pulses and temperatures and blood-pressures were seething in his mind; and sharp sticks and jagged stones and the general possibilities of a puncture; and murmurs of the heart and rles of the lungs; and a most unaccountable knock-knock-knocking in the engine; and the probable relation of middle-ear disease; and the perfectly positive symptoms of optic neuritis; and a damned funny squeak in the ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... low metal railing. We surged against it. I caught a dizzying glimpse of the abyss. Then it receded as we bounced the other way. And then we fell to the grid. His helmet bashed against mine, striking as though butting with the side of his head to puncture my visor-panel. His gloved fingers were trying to rip at ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... Tomkin's bicycle. He, being very athletic, was playing croquet, a game which requires vast muscular strength. However, he said that his tyres were something quite new, and that in one minute one man, or even one child, could stick one postage-stamp, or anything of the sort, over that puncture and mend it. So all the rest of us and the butler, principally the butler, who is an expert in bicycles, went at it vigorously, and after we had all worked for nearly an hour the tyre was patched up, and Tomkins, having finished his ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... Catharine (here he sank his voice to a whisper), I desire to be informed whether your fair fingers have been employed upon it, agreeably to your promise? But I need not ask you, for my poor heart has felt the pang of each puncture that pierced the garment which was to cover it. Traitress, how wilt thou answer for thus tormenting the heart that loves thee ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... an air-tight proposition, he admitted, at last. But, he said to himself, anything air-tight could be punctured. And undoubtedly a fine flow of currency would result from such a puncture. So he kept on looking about, asking casual questions, listening. In the language of the street ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... journey, poor things. Twenty to twenty-four ambulances would set off to do the thirty kilometres in convoy, led at a steady pace by the Section Leader. These journeys took place three times a week, and often the men would get bitterly cold inside the cars. If there was one puncture in the Convoy we all had to stop till a spare wheel was put on. We eagerly took the opportunity to get down and do stamping exercises and "cabby" arms to try and get warm. To my utmost surprise, on one ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... sentence—"Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! Thou art raw." And raw he is like to remain for all his learning, and for all incisions that can be made in the horny hide of a self-conceit to be pierced by the puncture of no man's pen. It was bad enough while theorists of this breed confined themselves to the suggestion of a possible partnership with Fletcher, a possible interpolation by Jonson; but in the descent from these to the alleged adulteration of the text by Middleton and Rowley we have ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the leg, Monsieur Dollon complained of, need not cause any anxiety. It is a very slight superficial wound. A slight swelling above the broken skin possibly indicates an intra-muscular puncture, which might have been made by someone unaccustomed to such operations, for it is a clumsy performance. It is a ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... poetry, and cow-boys, and dumb rascals, and settle down into a respectable matron, a comfort to the gray hairs she was now bringing with sorrow to the grave. Then Ginevra became absolutely silent; he had taught her that any reply was but a new start for his objurgation, a knife wherewith to puncture a fresh gall-bladder of abuse. He stormed at her for her sullenness, but she persisted in her silence, sorely distressed to find how dead her heart seemed growing under his treatment of her: what would at one time have made her utterly ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... have had this cover on the rear wheel of my 3-1/2 h.p. Humber Motor Cycle and have ridden same 7,000 miles, six of these without a puncture."—Advt. in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... supported the patient on the knee of another man, and the rest of the party kept off the crowd by mingled persuasion and violence, he produced a lancet and summarily reduced the swelling by lancing it. He then dressed the puncture neatly with appliances for that purpose which he carried about him, and shouted in Mellish's ear to rouse him. But the trainer only groaned, and let his head drop inert on his breast. More shouting was resorted to, but in vain. Cashel impatiently ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... less numerous than before. They were in some degree replaced by a small sandfly, whose bite is succeeded by a copious flow of blood and considerable swelling but is attended with incomparably less irritation than the puncture of the mosquito. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... College, as young gentlemen are received at college; and nowhere else, I hope, for the credit of Christendom. They showed him a hole in the roof, and called it an "Attic;" grim pleasantry! being a puncture in the modern Athens. They inserted him; told him what hour at the top of the morning he must be in chapel; and left him to find out his other ills. His cases were welcomed like Christians, by the whole staircase. These undergraduates abused one another's crockery ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... long-handled spoon when wanted to use, as the shells are sometimes not quite as hard as when placed in the crock. The eggs may be used for cooking, baking, in fact, for any purpose except soft-boiled but should you wish to boil them, a tiny puncture should be made in the shell of these ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... look and manner as he calmly adjusted his glasses and read the letter of Judge Fine brought the blood to my face. It seemed to puncture my balloon, so to speak, and I was falling toward the earth and so swiftly my head swam. He laid the letter on his desk and, without looking up and as coolly as if he were asking for the change of a ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... physical and moral, came from the bite Camille had given him in the neck. At certain moments, he imagined that this scar covered the whole of his body. If he came to forget the past, he all at once fancied he felt a burning puncture, that recalled the murder both to his frame ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... should tell you, is (or was) a waterproof. It is a faithful record of Edward's artistic activities during the last thirty years, being decorated all down the front with smears of red, white and green paint. Here and there it has been repaired with puncture patches and strips of surgical plaster, but more often it has not. As Edward is incapable of replacing a button and Aunt Angela refuses to touch the "Limit," he knots himself into it with odds and ends of string and has to be liberated by his ally, the cook, with a kitchen knife. Edward ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various

... womanhood. There was a plumpness about her body, a ruddiness to her lips, that gave me the phantasy that, perhaps, the moment before, she had drunk of my father's blood, and that she was preventing me from going in to where he lay till a certain tiny, red puncture over his ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... road zigzags extraordinarily in and out of the innumerable lateral ravines, each with its water course, dense jungle, and legion of leeches; the bite of these blood-suckers gives no pain, but is followed by considerable effusion of blood. They puncture through thick worsted stockings, and even trousers, and, when full, roll in the form of a little soft ball into the bottom of the shoe, where their presence ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... Ka-ra-kul, a doctor or conjuror, three of which sleep on the grave of a recently interred corpse; when in the night, during their sleep, the dead person inserts a mysterious bone into each thigh of the three doctors, who feel the puncture not more severe than that of the sting of an ant. The bones remain in the flesh of the doctors without any inconvenience to them, until they wish to kill any person, when by unknown means, it is said and believed, they ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... death we had witnessed, twas a light delicate little fellow, about fourteen years old, of the name of Duncan; he was the smallest boy of his age I ever saw, and had been badly hurt in repelling the attack of the pirate. His wound was a lacerated puncture in the left shoulder from a boarding pike, but it appeared to be healing kindly, and for some days we thought he was doing well. However, about five o'clock in the afternoon on which we made Jamaica, the surgeon accosted ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... death through that almost imperceptible wound under his chin. This wound, so far as I have yet been able to examine it without a glass, was made with a somewhat blunt instrument, able, apparently, to little more than puncture the skin and draw a drop or so of blood. Of course, on such a theory, death must have resulted from poisoning. The essential point is: Where is the instrument ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... wish to use for their food the juices of other animals or of plants do not find them so easy to gather. In the mosquito most of the mouth parts are developed into slender pointed bristles wrapped in a hind lip. These bristles serve to puncture the skin of the creature attacked, while the curled lip serves as a tube through which ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... Tom reassuringly. "He may have had a puncture, or something like that. Bicyclists are just as liable to them as autoists," he added with ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... with water from gourds, and rubbed him clean and dry with handfuls of wild cotton waste. So far, although the incessant hail of bullets had pitted the boiler's skin in a hundred places, no second shot had found a spot sufficiently soft to make a puncture. The range of the bombardment was long, perhaps, and though a bullet at seven hundred yards may, with convenience, kill a man, it will not pierce seven-eighths boiler plate. And so, theoretically, the boiler was safe for the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... recalling bits of decent, illuminating gossip. He is willing to tell a fantastic yarn with a dry face or to tuck a tragedy in a sentence; to repeat some village legend in his own low tones or to puncture some village bubble with a ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... program, Senate or no Senate—and no matter what scares you people cook up in the stock market." To this they made no answer beyond delicately polite insinuations about being tired of paying for that which was theirs of right. I did not argue; it is never necessary to puncture the pretenses of men of affairs with a view to saving them from falling into the error of forgetting that whatever "right" may mean on Sunday, on week days it means that which a man ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... amidst all the scepticisms of times in which, happily, such arts are unknown, unsuspected, learn from the hero of Machiavel how a clasp of the hand can get rid of a foe! Easier and more natural to point to the living puncture in the skin, and the swollen flesh round it, and dilate on the danger a rusty nail—nay, a pin—can engender when the humours are peccant and the blood is impure! The fabrication of that bauble, the discovery of Borgia's device, was the masterpiece in the science ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 31) still another cluster was taken from the same tree (Fig. 8). Here are three fruits erect on their stems; one of them is more than an inch in diameter either way, sturdy and unblemished; another shows deformity due to insect puncture; the third remains small and presently will drop. A scar in the leaf-axil marks the failure of another flower. Four blossoms were in this cluster, but only one fruit now has a chance to come to uninjured maturity, and two have already ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... have loved, et cetera, as aforesaid, will comprehend the anxiety with which Otto henceforth consulted his ring. He was continually adjusting it to his finger in a manner, as he fancied, to render the anticipated puncture more perceptible when it should come at last. He would have worn it on all his fingers in succession had the conformation of his robust hand admitted of its being placed on any but the slenderest. Thousands of times he could have sworn that he felt the admonitory sting; thousands of ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett



Words linked to "Puncture" :   pinprick, split up, break, prick, mischance, pierce, pricking, deprecate, hole, make, depressurise, create, vilipend, scarify, lumbar puncture, decompress, spinal puncture, come apart, perforation, separate, activity, venipuncture, depreciate, centesis, pinhole, deflate, depressurize, fall apart



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